‘Dreamer’ Plan That Aided 800,000 Immigrants Is Threatened

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A protest this month in support of DACA outside the office of Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general. Mr. Paxton and other attorneys general have said they will file a lawsuit if the White House does not phase out the program.CreditCreditTamir Kalifa/Austin American-Statesman

Jessica Rojas beat poverty to put herself through engineering college, where she collected accolades for academic achievement. After graduating last year, Ms. Rojas, who grew up in Chicago, was hired by a utility company to help modernize the city’s electrical grid.

But her life could soon be upended in a showdown over a five-year-old initiative, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which has granted permission to stay and work to about 800,000 immigrants like Ms. Rojas who were brought illegally to the United States as children.

Since attacking DACA on the campaign trail, President Trump has pledged to keep the program alive, calling recipients, also known as Dreamers, “absolutely incredible kids” who deserve compassion. But in recent days, key players in his administration have advised Mr. Trump to wind down the program, and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has informed him he considers it unconstitutional and cannot defend it in court, according to people familiar with the discussions who insisted on anonymity to describe private deliberations. While the White House has declined to comment on the fate of DACA, several officials and people briefed on the discussions now say the president is on the brink of ending it, although they note that Mr. Trump often changes his mind.

Mr. Trump has been pondering — and publicly agonizing over — what to do about the program since he took office. But discussions about it inside the White House took on new urgency after a group of conservative state attorneys general threatened to sue the Trump administration in federal court unless it begins to dismantle the program by Sept. 5.

John F. Kelly, the president’s chief of staff, expressed skepticism in July, when he was homeland security secretary, that the program would survive legal scrutiny.

The Justice Department would be responsible for defending DACA, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a fierce opponent of the program, has not said whether he would, and the president has not said whether he would order Mr. Sessions to do so.

Even if he did, it is not clear that the program would survive a court challenge; Republican attorneys general have had success blocking other Obama-era immigration policies.

But a decision by the administration not to defend it “would almost certainly spell a death knell for the program,” said Paul Virtue, a partner in the law firm of Mayer Brown who in the 1980s and ’90s was a senior official at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, as the agency was then known.

DACA has changed the lives of many beneficiaries, enabling them to qualify for financial aid for college, secure better jobs and open bank accounts. These milestones on the road to self-sufficiency would be jeopardized if DACA is wiped out.

“It allowed me to blend into society in every way,” said Monica Lazaro, 24, who was born in Honduras but raised in Miami. DACA made it possible for her to obtain a driver’s license, pay in-state college tuition and live without fear. Ms. Lazaro has been working as a research associate at Nova Southeastern University studying chronic fatigue syndrome, and recently received security clearance to work at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Miami.

“Without DACA, I would be fired immediately,” she said.

Most crucially, if DACA ends, those who benefit from the program would again be eligible for deportation. And they would not be hard to find — the Department of Homeland Security has DACA and tax documents showing their addresses, which may also be the addresses of their undocumented parents.

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Jessica Rojas says the elimination of DACA would put her career and her life in America in jeopardy.CreditAlyssa Schukar for The New York Times

“If DACA is repealed, they have my most updated tax return and know where I live,” said Jung Woo Kim, a DACA beneficiary who was born in South Korea. He spoke during a rally in Washington on Aug. 15, the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the program.

He traveled from Los Angeles to participate in a round-the-clock vigil near the White House that is scheduled to end when Congress is back in session Sept. 5, the deadline for Mr. Trump to respond to the attorneys general.

The threat to the program has rekindled an activist spirit that was crucial to its creation. Hundreds of people turned out for the Washington rally, one of several held around the country that day, and more than two dozen people were arrested and accused of blocking sidewalks.

Starting around 2010, undocumented young adults campaigned with intensifying vigor, using marches, sit-ins and other methods, as hope faded that Congress would provide them with a path to lawful status. Their leaders ultimately secured meetings with Obama aides and argued that the executive branch could grant undocumented immigrants “deferred action,” a form of prosecutorial discretion that would shield them from deportation and allow them to work, although it would not confer legal residency or citizenship.

“DACA gave a group of undocumented people the ability to get in line, and we did, 800,000 of us,” said Gaby Pacheco, 32, one of the leaders of the movement. “The economy didn’t collapse. People didn’t lose their jobs. Quite the contrary: We bought cars, homes, and were able to make better wages.”

To qualify, applicants must have entered the United States before age 16, lived in the country continuously since June 2007 and have committed no serious crimes. The protection lasts for two years and can be renewed. The administration has approved tens of thousands of new and renewal requests for DACA deferrals since Mr. Trump took office.

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Monica Lazaro, who was born in Honduras but raised in Miami, said DACA “allowed me to blend into society in every way,”CreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times

Polls show that DACA enjoys overwhelming support among the public. But eliminating it would please many Trump supporters who favor a hard-line stance on illegal immigration and who regard the program as nothing short of an amnesty that the president has no power to grant.

“It’s not about the policy; it’s about the Constitution,” said Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, who accused Mr. Obama of abusing his power by circumventing Congress to create law. “The fact is, there is no statute authorizing this.”

Mr. Paxton was joined by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia, as well as Idaho Gov. C. L. Otter, in a June 29 letter to Mr. Sessions urging the White House to start phasing out DACA by Sept. 5 or face a lawsuit.

In 2015, Texas and 25 other states won a federal court ruling blocking the Obama administration from extending deferred action to an estimated five million undocumented parents of children who were citizens or legal residents, as well as to young immigrants who arrived between 2007 and 2010. The ruling was upheld on appeal, and last year, the Supreme Court split 4 to 4, leaving the lower court’s decision in place.

If the attorneys general have the same success challenging DACA, it would be up to Congress to give the Dreamers a way to stay in the country legally. Four bills with bipartisan sponsors have been filed that would provide relief to the Dreamers. Those do not appear likely to gain traction in the near future. Nevertheless, there has been talk of a possible large-scale deal in which the Dreamers would be granted protection in exchange for something else, such as more restrictions on legal immigration or tougher measures for illegal immigrants.

“These young people grew up in this country and came out of the shadows voluntarily after our government promised not to deport them,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who has introduced legislation with Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, to make DACA permanent. “We’ve since witnessed Dreamers graduate college, start businesses and give back to their communities in myriad ways,” Mr. Durbin said.

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“It’s not about the policy; it’s about the Constitution,” Mr. Paxton said of his opposition to DACA.CreditTamir Kalifa for The New York Times

With the program’s future in the balance, more than 100 law professors recently signed a letter to President Trump arguing that DACA is legal because the president has the power to decide whom to deport, given that the government does not have the resources to target all undocumented immigrants.

“The legality of the program is crystal clear,” said Shoba Wadhia, a law professor at Penn State who helped write the letter.

Support has also come from a group of Democratic attorneys general led by Xavier Becerra of California, who may try to intervene to defend DACA, as well as from some business leaders.

John Rowe, a former chief executive of the energy giant Exelon, who has mentored Ms. Rojas, the DACA recipient, at the Illinois Institute of Technology, said, “The program has been instrumental to advance talented people like Jessica.”

Now a co-chairman of the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition, Mr. Rowe organized a letter to Mr. Trump supporting the program that was signed by 132 chief executives from across the country. “To cancel this program is bad economics, bad politics and un-American,” he said in an email.

For Ms. Rojas, who was brought to the United States from Mexico when she was 5 and was the first in her family to attend college, it could spell the end of her $65,000-a-year job working for a unit of Exelon and put her entire life in America in jeopardy. “It’s scary,” she said. “Because of DACA, I was able to come this far.”

Nathalie Nieves contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Program That Lifted 800,000 Immigrant ‘Dreamers’ Is at Risk. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe